"So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable."
-Walter Bagehot
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"The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.“
-Walter Bagehot
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"Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success."
-Walter Bagehot
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"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."
-Walter Bagehot
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"The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards."
-Walter Bagehot
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"A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
-Walter Bagehot
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"Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison."
-Walter Bagehot
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"Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers."
-Carlos Fuentes
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"If I had been elected president in 1948, history would be vastly different. I believe we would have stemmed the growth of Big Government, which had begun with the New Deal and culminated with the Great Society."
-Strom Thurmond
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"For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats."
-Harry Browne
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"There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations."
-Claude Vorilhon
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"This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?"
-Azar Nafisi
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"What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history."
-Barney Frank
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